Friday, June 23, 2017

STELLAR IMPACT

I have always been fascinated by the night's sky from an early age and spending time at the local planetarium growing up and now I wait anxiously for the stellar images provided by NASA and elsewhere from the Hubble, Cassini and other sources. Given this interest, it is easy to see why I find small universes and celestial bodies in the forms of pots and their surfaces which is so often the case with the pieces that I am drawn to. A while back I was able to handle and photograph a large Shigaraki tsubo and put the jpegs in a folder and skimmed over them for further study at a later date as I was still in the process of digesting what I had just handled and their they sat. I was looking through an EHD that I have and went to the tsubo file and was struck by this detail shot which was not taken with any other motive than to capture the surface where the ferocity and velocity of the firing had impacted. The image immediately called to mind a planetary surface where a stellar impact  had sent the debris, in this case, liquid ash running from the collision zone, the face of the pot which was fired at a slight angle which has distributed the ash in every direction. It is exactly this type of photo, detail shot that reminds me exactly why I take so many photos of each pot that comes my way as serendipity and not photographic skill will from time to time capture an image that speaks volumes about a pot and conjures up all kinds of memories and associations that words alone rarely can.